Resentment is growing in Germany as the effects of America’s financial meltdown spread around the world.

At a September 20 political rally in Linz, Austria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that the United States’ refusal to impose more stringent conditions on its banking sector has dragged other nations into the credit crisis. In particular, her complaint was that the Bush administration had opposed German attempts to put greater regulation of the financial sector on the international agenda last year, when she was chairing the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Because of this opposition, she said, taxpayers in countries far beyond America are being forced to foot the bill for Washington’s fiscal mismanagement.

The fact that U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, on September 21, urged foreign governments to follow America’s example and start bailing out their own banks did not help the situation.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke for many Germans when he said in a speech to the parliament in Berlin, “The sole remaining superpower has lost credibility.”

In order to prevent similar economic crises from occurring, the German government has strongly recommended that a new international financial authority be established. Peer Steinbrueck, Germany’s Social Democrat finance minister, described this proposed financial authority as a means to set “traffic rules for the financial markets.”

Germany is the largest economy in Europe, and it is losing confidence in America’s financial hegemony.

A collapse of the Western world’s monetary system would shock European nations into rallying around Germany to seek protection under its economic umbrella. Such a situation would cause Europe to unite economically, politically and militarily in a stunningly short period of time.

As Herbert W. Armstrong, editor in chief of the Plain Truth magazine, wrote back in 1984, a massive banking crisis in America could “suddenly result in triggering European nations to unite as a new world power larger than either the Soviet Union or the U.S.” (member and co-worker letter, July 22, 1984).

Earlier, in the April 1980 edition of the Plain Truth, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “You may be sure the West European leaders are conferring hurriedly and secretly about how and how soon they may unite and provide a united European military force so they can defend themselves! … And who will they blame for their humiliation and their necessity now to have a united Europe, with a united government, a common currency, and a common military force as great or greater than either the ussr or the usa? They will blame the United States!”

Watch the ailing American economy. Its failure will turn the world on its head. For more information, read “America’s Financial 9/11” and “U.S. Crash vs. EU Rise.”